DUBAI: It is no secret that 2017 was the year of Beyoncé and her twins, with the superstar racking up a record-breaking 11 million likes on the photo she posted on Instagram announcing her pregnancy. However, the year was busy for celebrities across the board, many of whom took to social media to share weird and wonderful snaps of exactly what they got up to.
From births to surgeries, read on for 2017’s most iconic celebrity snaps and see if your favorite photo made the cut.
The Salt Bae sensation
In January, Turkish chef Nusret Gokce — also known as “Salt Bae” — became internationally famous thanks to his theatrical seasoning of food.
The restaurateur was hardly a nobody before: He runs the popular Nusr-Et Steakhouse chain in his native Turkey, along with two restaurants in the UAE, at the Four Seasons Resort on Jumeirah Beach Road in Dubai and a new branch at The Galleria on Al Maryah Island in Abu Dhabi.
But it was a brief Instagram video that really saw Salt Bae become flavor of the month, and the year.
It shows the chef, with his trademark slick-back hair and dark glasses, purposefully cutting up a slab of meat, before bending his rather muscular arm and sprinkling salt down it to season the food. It became his trademark move.
The Internet went crazy — and a meme was born.
Selena Gomez undergoes surgery
The US singer was also included in Instagram’s yearly list due to a snap she posted of her post-surgery recovery this year.
Huda Kattan meets Kim Kardashian
Tongues in the world of beauty were set wagging in August, when Dubai-based mogul Huda Kattan shared a snap of a lunch meeting with none other than Kim Kardashian.
It was a glorious meeting of the minds and left fashion and beauty lovers calling for a collaboration.
A model greeting
It is not commonplace for American celebrities to wish their followers Eid Mubarak, so when Gigi Hadid and British star Zayn Malik did so in November, it made headlines. Palestinian-American model Hadid and Malik revealed that they spent the Eid Al-Adha holiday with none other than their mothers, in a snap shared on Instagram.
Yolanda Hadid, Gigi’s mother, shared the photo on her Instagram account and captioned it: “Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating.”
Malik, who hails from a British Pakistani family, has been open about his Islamic background.
Miss Israel and Miss Iraq pose for a selfie
The selfie caption may have read “Peace and Love from Miss Iraq and Miss Israel,” but the reaction to them posing together prompted something closer to “push and shove” in November.
Beauty queens Sarah Idan and Adar Gandelsman represented their respective countries at the Miss Universe pageant in Las Vegas, but Iraq’s Idan probably was not betting on the backlash to her Instagram post.
“This picture doesn’t mean I support the Israeli government or its polices toward Arab countries. I apologize to everyone who saw it as an insult to the Palestinian cause — this was not its purpose,” Idan said in a response in Arabic.
More than 3,600 “likes” greeted their picture, but it also triggered an avalanche of comments, some positive and others negative in a country that does not recognize Israel, with which it is still technically at war.
